THE CLIMATE PLEDGE 4/4
AMAZON’S GREEN MISSION
If you’ve been reading the Amazon post series and wondering why drones weren’t mentioned in Air, here you go.
The plan here is to look at energy (Fire, in OwlVoices speak). Drone delivery fits into a lot of categories. Not just as a potential solution to climate impacts, but for the forward-looking vision it inspires. So, energy in every sense of the word.
It’s all up in the air right now, with only theories and limited real-time data to float at the moment. Argonne National Laboratory has been modeling efficiency of drone deliveries systems, battery-electric vehicles and diesel trucks.
Of course, drones use far less energy, that is, unless there’s wind. The lab’s study showed that in “average” wind speeds of 10mph, package-wielding drones needed 15.8% more energy that BEVs, but scored for using 73% less than diesel trucks.
But, the study was conducted in Chicago, the “Windy City,” where winds easily hit 20 miles per hour, and drones sucked up five times more energy than BEVs and 15% more than diesel haulers.
Delivery providers are chomping at the bit to be on this leading edge, probably for the business it will attract. At the moment, it’s not looking to be much of a sustainability goal, cheap or easy-to-implement. In the US, Federal Aviation Administration certification is needed, visual observers are often required and only one drone can be operated at a time.
Those are big clues as to why Amazon currently offers the service in only two cities, and only when the weather is just right.
A renewable energy transition is a bigger priority for Amazon, which is also investing in alternative fuel solutions like green hydrogen and ultra-low carbon electrofuels for delivery and operations.
Amazon’s numbers:
It ranks #1 in the world in corporate purchasing of renewables
In 2022, 90% of its electricity consumption came from renewable sources, putting it solidly ahead of its 2030 target of 100%
It has initiated more than 400 new, global renewable energy projects
Long-term contracts for approaches like purchasing agreements for the same energy grids Amazon uses and participating in green tariff programs with utilities, push these projects forward and promote economic growth in communities.
More Amazon numbers:
$12.6 billion invested globally in renewables from 2014-2022
$5.4 billion total GDP globally in that same period
39,000 FTE jobs supported in 2022
133 new projects in 11 countries last year pushed its renewable energy capacity to more than 20 gigawatts. That is enough to power 5.3 million US homes.
We’ve considered that while Amazon is pushing toward all these targets, its footprint continues to grow. However it all shakes out, we can feel good about targets that are ... targeted.
A few years ago, I bought my first Echo, now one of a home network. Honestly, as careful as I am about energy use, I hadn’t thought about how much these devices use. But now I know that, at about that same time, Amazon committed to clean energy investments to offset the electricity used by all Echo, Fire TV, and Ring devices.
I will dig further into that later. For now, I’m just going to drink the Kool-Aid.
